


London Calling

by windandthestars



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: F/M, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-07 23:55:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13446099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windandthestars/pseuds/windandthestars
Summary: “You’re not running away because you mess up, you’re running away so you don’t mess up?” He says it like it doesn’t make any sense, like he’s really trying to figure this out.__Mac tries to take a few days off in London and ends up with Will at her door.





	London Calling

**Author's Note:**

> Set some time early on in 112th Congress (1.03), in the early summer of 2010. Spoilers for the first couple of episodes, but nothing beyond that. There is some mild language in the fic, nothing we wouldn't see on the show.
> 
> This is a combination of a very strange first draft (man did I think Will was a jerk when season one first aired) and some very sleepy writing/editing.

She’s enjoying her time back on English soil. The last time she’d been here had been before Iraq, when she was still with Will. London itself has changed, but this borough– the row of houses, grand and European with their wrought iron balconies– was the same.

She’s not sure what purpose the house she’s been lent for the week usually serves, one of her father’s contacts had made the arrangements, but it’s the same house she’s always had when she comes to town and in a way it feels like coming home. It’s not one of the houses she grew up in, but it has its own memories and she loves that about it, the sense of familiarity she still doesn’t have in her apartment in New York.

She stops to grab groceries from the Waitrose that’s sprung up across from the Tube station. Wandering past wire baskets full of produce and rows of eggs on shelves, she picks up a couple of bottles of wine, nestling them in beside boxes of crackers and bricks of semi-decent cheese. It feels a bit like she’s planning to entertain, the fancy cheese, the tiny sandwich bread, the expensive tea she buys, and she likes that about being here. She can pretend, for the moment that she’s not hiding from Will, from a not yet forgotten folly, and the doubts that keep running through her mind. 

Things were a mess. She needed some space to sort them out: a week of normal hours, no phone calls, some peace and quiet. 

*

She’s just sunk down into the bath she’s drawn in the oversized clawfoot tub when someone knocks on the front door. They haven’t rang the bell. They’ve knocked and then proceeded to drop a series of letter in the mail slot. At least that’s what it sounds like until she pulls on a robe and makes her way downstairs.

“Mac, are you home?”

“Will?” She’s alarmed for a moment until she realizes he’s knelt to yell through the slot in the door like a kid eavesdropping at a keyhole. If there had been an emergency someone would’ve called her before he’d had time to fly across the Atlantic. Charlie had her UK cell number even if Will didn’t. “What are you doing here?” She whips open the door as she hears him straighten, knee protesting.

“Charlie gave me your address. I told him I was surprising you for your birthday.”

“My birthday is next month.”

“He doesn’t need to know that.” Will shifts his weight and then raises an eyebrow as she draws her robe tighter around herself. “I’m not interrupting am I?”

“You are.” She grumbles, “I ran a bath. I was having a nice quiet afternoon considering I spent the better part of the last twelve hours crossing the Atlantic.”

“So did I.” He reminds her a bit petulantly, reaching toward the bag at his feet.

“You came straight from the airport.” It’s not a question. It doesn’t need to be; his clothes are casual, rumpled, and there’s no way he’d be carrying his bag if he’d checked into a hotel.

“I had your address and I didn’t think to book a hotel. I’m not so good with spontaneity sometimes.”

“You can’t stay here.” She’s not exactly sure why she says it. She’s not trying to hurt him, or imply there’s someone here. He knows her well enough to know there’s no one else, not now, not yet.

She’s still too unsettled by the thought of the two of them in the same room, the fact that he’s talking to her, that they’ve had whole conversations spanning the weeks and the months since she’d returned to New York. He hasn’t forgiven her, hasn’t come close, but there are moments, rash moments like this, when she thinks that maybe someday he might, and yet she can’t. She can’t ask him to stay. She has the room, but she turns him away, almost. “I have wine, or tea if you prefer. I can’t imagine your flight was very comfortable.”

He frowns, equal parts consideration and consternation. “I was drooled on by a small child. I still don’t see their appeal.”

“Oh, shut up and get inside.”

He grins at her, that slow, almost sly smile of his and she shakes her head, gesturing toward the kitchen. “The wine’s in the fridge, the kettle’s on the counter.”

* 

She thought at first he was bluffing. Spontaneous trip or not, the Will she had known would’ve made a hotel reservation. He would’ve cancelled it five minutes after she’d let him in the front door, but he would’ve made one, and the fact that he hadn’t, she doesn’t want to think too much about that, about the fact that neither one of them is the person they used to be; the old MacKenzie would have thrown herself into his arms laughing with delight before he’d even thought about asking to come in. They weren’t those people anymore.

“Since it’s just the one night I suppose you won’t mind The Soho or Haymarket. They’re both nice, central, getting back to Heathrow won’t be too much of a hassle.”

“One night?” Will stops his inspection of her newspaper to glance over to where she’s leaning against the granite counter. “I wasn’t aware I was going anywhere, unless you—”

“You took the whole week off.” She knows she sounds a bit hysterical, she should have figured he wouldn’t come all the way here for a weekend, not if he had to be on the air on Monday. “We can’t both take the week off.”

“I cleared it with Charlie,” he holds up a hand, palm toward her in a mirror of her usual gesture. “I asked the guys from Dayside to cover.”

“Dayside.” She doesn’t bother justifying the squeaky quality her voice takes on with the word.

“Relax,” he chuckles, “I asked Kathy to cover for me. She’s thrilled I’m letting her use my chair.”

“You,” she’s sputtering, although it’s less out of protest and more because she’s not sure what to make of the fact that he’s blindsided her with this.

“I’m not going to ask you out to dinner or suggest you show me around town. I should be able to find the Tower and Traitors’ Gate on my own.”

The barb stings more than she knows it should. She should be used to it by now, be immune to the way his words suddenly swing back unassumingly harsh after a careful comment or a well-crafted joke. She would pay her penance at his hands if that’s what he wanted, but she really wished he would let her alone, at least for right now. “Will, I—“

“You have a bad habit of running away when you think you’ve fuck up inexcusably. Charlie hasn’t figured it out yet, but as managing editor of News Night, I’ve decided this is unacceptable.”

“I can show you around. You’ll end up getting mobbed by the crowds and you’ll miss the—“

He frowns at her and she stops, unsettled enough by the firmness of his last part of his statement not to push her luck.

“So what was it this time? I thought things were going pretty well.” He amends when she glances at him.

“The show,” she stops herself, surprised by how soft her protest is, by how uncertain she sounds. “I needed a break. I wasn’t–“ She insists firmly, less quietly, knowing he’s going to argue.

“The Columbia Journalism Review is quite pleased with you.” He continues like she hasn’t said anything, like he hadn’t heard her, but she can see the echo of her words flicker in his eyes, a hesitance that still hurts when she sees it.

“Us. Pleased with us.” She insists. “I’m the EP. I know,” she’s suddenly exasperated in a furious sort of way, but she’s trying to be careful; she can’t raise her voice, not here with neighbors so close.

“I’m the managing editor. If you’d fucked up, you’d—“

“I had the time off booked weeks ago. This isn’t some impulsive—“

“MacKenzie.” She bites her lip to keep herself from saying anything as she watches him press his hands flat against the table, a smooth gesture that holds none of the helpless frustration she’s already feeling. “What the hell are you doing here?”

She could ask him the same thing. She really would like to know, but she isn’t sure she has the right to know, is even less sure that she’ll like the answer.

“I needed some time, to consider,” she takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “The show is good, great. It’s everything I want it to be. I don’t want to mess that up.”

“Meaning?” He prompts and she shrugs, unwilling to answer both his question and the indecipherable look in his eyes.

“That’s what I was hoping to figure out.” It’s an infuriating non-answer, she knows that, but it’s the best she can give him with the echo of Traitors’ Gate hanging in the air.

“You’re not running away because you fucked up, you’re running away so you don’t fuck up?” He says it like it doesn’t make any sense, like he’s really trying to figure this out.

It doesn’t make sense. She knows that, but it’s the closest he can come to an answer with what she isn’t saying. “I’m not running away.” 

“That’s bullshit.” She watches his confusion fade. He’s sure of that. He knows her, still knows her, well enough to know that.

No, she should say. It’s not, she could say. There are a lot of things she could say, but as much as it’ll infuriate him, she shouldn’t say anything. She should keep her mouth shut and not give him something else to throw back at her, but they’ve already had this conversation, in a way, during her first week at ACN, and she knows that if he’s come here for this— why else would he have crossed the Atlantic to find her— she’s going to have to say something, and she might as well be honest, to a point.

“I thought you might want some time, to not see me for a while.” That’s not the truth, not exactly, but it sounds better than you: not to see you for awhile, I needed to not see you for awhile. She doesn’t want to lay this on him like that, lay herself at his feet like that, but he’s going to figure it out eventually, if not now, then when it happens again, when she tries to push the two of them apart, because it will happen again; she’s signed on for three years of this.

“You’re running away from me.” Part of his smile is defensive, reflexive, she knows that, but he does seem generally amused by the idea. “Am I really that horrible?”

“No, Will. You’re not— I thought, you didn’t,” she fumbles a bit as he watches her, still sitting at the table, as she moves along behind the counter unmoored. “You didn’t get much say when I showed up. I thought—”

“Nor much say when you leave either.” He interrupts and she stops, looking down to pick at something stuck to the counter.

“I’m sorry.”

“Mac.”

“I thought—”

“Mac—”

“I thought if I wasn’t around you’d have an easier time moving on.” She’s biting her bottom lip again, trying to stop herself, but the raw ache in her chest and her previous honesty have left their cracks in the wall between them and the conversation pushes forward, spilling out from both of them. “I know you’ve been trying, and I thought, I thought it might be easier.”

“For me?”

“For both of us.” She admits quietly, so quietly she hopes he hasn’t heard, but it’s clear when she looks up that he has. 

“I fell in love with you.” The confession makes her eyes sting and she looks away again. “I fell in love with you and then I fucked it all up and I thought if I had some time. If I didn’t have to see you every day, I could figure out how to stop.”

“Loving me?”

She nods to herself, not looking at him despite the lack of emotion behind his words. “You deserve to be happy. We both do.”

“And you don’t think we are?”

“You do?” The question sneaks out and she winces. He deserves more than this, but he’s here, unexpectedly in her kitchen, three and a half thousand miles from where he’s supposed to be, and it’s the best she has.

“What makes this time different?”

“What?” She’s confused. He’s backed up and started picking at her logic, holding off the need to reply.

“You already left once.” The reminder isn’t harsh like she’d expect it to be, it isn’t anything like she expected it to be. “Why is this time different?”

“Because I didn’t know.” She lets the words fall out in a rush and then sighs with a rapid rise and fall of her shoulders before clarifying. “I couldn’t know. I didn’t have a choice. Whatever you did or didn’t do. I didn’t have to choose. I just had to live with it.”

“And then you came back.”

“I thought you said yes. I thought—”

“So what’s changed?”

“I don’t know.” It’s harsh and angry and more than a little frustrated. “I thought if I had some time.”

“You’d figure it out.”

“We’re not happy. I know you know that. We’re both fucking miserable and I’m, I’m—” She cuts herself off with an irritated growl. “I don’t know what I’m doing any more.”

“So Haymarket then.” He smiles to himself as she looks toward him in surprise. She knows he’s never been particularly good at talking like this, especially when he wasn’t the one trying not to yell, but it wasn’t like him to so blatantly change the subject. “You’re on a quest for El Dorado. You can’t have me interrupting.”

She feels her eyebrows draw together, feels the mood shift, the anger and frustration tugged away by the familiar comfort of his even self-assurance. “That wasn’t in the book.”

“In the Cliff Notes?” His smile grows teasing. “El Dorado is a Columbian myth. Don Quixote took place in seventeenth century Spain.”

“I know that.” She’s frowning in a way she knows he might still find endearing, but she can’t shake the look, shake the confusion. “Did you really come all this way to tell me to come home?”

He shrugs, picking up the paper again, fussing with the fold. “You have a habit of running away.”

“You could have called.”

“Would you have listened?”

“I would have answered.”

“That’s fair.” She hears him mutter to himself and she almost doesn’t say anything, almost doesn’t press.

“I would’ve had to listen.”

“Yeah?” He sets his finger down midway through a paragraph and raises his eyebrows at her.

“You have my contract.”

He nods seeming to understand, but she knows he’s questioning her logic. “That leaves me with a lot of spare time then.”

“I’ll show you around.” She closes her eyes for a moment before she continues. She had always wanted to show him around London, share it the way they had shared New York. She had never imagined that it would be like this, both of them conflicted, hesitant, confused. “Although if you want to see Traitors’ Gate we’re going to have to take a trip across the Thames.”

“The Tower—”

“The Gate is in the Thames.”

“In the water?” He shakes his head, less confused than amused. “I should have known nothing was going to make sense when I got here.”

“Are you sure you want me to show you around?”

“El Dorado’s a myth.”

“I know.” She sighs, following his leap in logic. “We’re both fucked. We might as well learn to live with it.”

“I’ll drink to that.” His smile is genuine, even as it tugs reluctantly at the corners of his mouth. “If you’re serious about the wine in the fridge we could.”

"All right." She turns and pulls a corkscrew from the drawer beside her. “Red or white? There’s a bottle of both, and one more in the cabinet. I wasn’t planning on going anywhere for awhile.”


End file.
